Moritz Chelius interviews Lars David Kellner: "Like in a cockpit" (IMRG, Mitteilungen 44, 2023)

(Zum online Artikel)

Lars David Kellner on harmoniums, the legato and a 1,300-page work

MC: You describe yourself as a "keyboard artist". What keyboard instruments do you have do you have at home?

LDK: I have a piano, a harmonium, a harpsichord, a celesta, a keyboard glockenspiel and a toy piano. So the house is pretty full! The toy piano worries me the least because I can just put it under my arm.

When you come home, the instruments all scream "Play me!", don't they?

That's how it is! And I answer desperately: I don't have enough time! No, seriously: it's a true paradise to wander from one instrument to the next in the living room. I'm a trained concert pianist, but I've become more versatile in the sense that I now also include the harmonium and the celesta in my concert programs.

Over the last few years, you have worked a lot with the harmonium and have recorded the complete harmonium works of Franz Liszt and Max Reger on seven albums. How did you come to play the instrument?

I had dealt with Liszt's late works as part of my last piano album. And there were some pieces in there that the composer had written for piano or harmonium. I then asked myself what it would sound like on this instrument, and at some point I just happened to be standing in front of one and simply grabbed the keys.

What was your first impression?

My first impression was: Oh God, you have to do everything differently here! At first glance, a harmonium looks like a small piano. But of course it's a completely autonomous instrument with its own characteristics that you first have to figure out. At first I was terribly overwhelmed, but then I got ambitious.

And then?

Yes, then I didn't just buy one, I think I've now bought over ten. I moved some of the instruments to good-sounding locations across Bavaria, but have since downsized again. At the moment I still have four harmoniums. It's a great blessing to get a good one at all. You sometimes wait many years because the market for high-quality instruments is pretty scarce. And you usually buy a pig in a poke, i.e. a harmonium that is in need for restoration. And then you hope that once it has been restored, it will sound so fine that you can use it for concerts or recordings.

Strictly speaking, the harmonium is a wind instrument and the sound is produced in a similar way to a harmonica. You have to provide the wind yourself using two pedals, right?

Yes, and that's one of the biggest challenges for harmonists. When you've come to the end with one pedal, you have to sit on top of it with the other pedal, so to speak, in order to create an even, constant flow of air. It takes a few months to get this right. Another exciting thing about the harmonium is that you can regulate the dynamics very variably. For example, I can strike a chord and let it sound unchanged. And if I want to, I can make it swell with the right lever and the right wind pressure and also take it back again. Interestingly, this works with the two halves of the instrument independently of each other, i.e. bass and treble. We harmonists refer to this as "division". This leads to amazing effects. Basically, there are two completely different systems for this instrument, suction wind and pressure wind harmoniums.

From recordings, people know you as a pianist who masters the most virtuoso works. You have recorded Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Mussorgsky and Janáček. Do you miss the virtuosity of the harmonium?

The virtuosity is only well hidden here: the challenges include, for example, a well-dosed wind, highly delicate knee lever operation, fast register pulling and an extremely good legato. You have to train yourself to do that. As a pianist, you think you can actually play legato. But go to the harmonium and you will realize: You can't! When you watch a good harmonium player, everything seems very easy, like a pilot in the cockpit. Virtuosity also consists of doing many things at the same time. If harmonium playing goes down like oil, then the instrumental soloist is doing a good job.

What literature is there for the harmonium?

I have always been attracted to the Romantic period and the developments in music at the beginning of the 20th century. The heyday of the harmonium was during this period, and there are outstanding works for the instrument from this era. For example, I was the first to record the complete works of Franz Liszt for harmonium on five albums. However, Sigfrid Karg-Elert wrote the vast majority of pieces for the instrument, well over 500 including arrangements. He was truly innovative and explored the harmonium to the full.

And Max Reger also composed for the harmonium.

Yes, but if you take it strictly, only two original compositions: The famous Romance, which other composers also arranged for various instrumentations, and a little Fughette, which I think was rediscovered only in the 1990s. But then there are also some arrangements, many of which, interestingly, were written in collaboration with his father.

With Josef Reger?

Yes, he inspired or persuaded Max to arrange his works, which actually always needed a church setting, for a smaller context. This resulted in arrangements of his second organ sonata, but also of some of his songs. And finally, there was the composer Karl Kämpf, who arranged Reger's chorales for the harmonium, which Reger later authorized. And if you collect all these works together, you end up with a wonderful two albums, which I have now recorded in this anniversary year.

How does Reger compose for the harmonium?

As usual: complex, polyphonic, concentrated. With Reger, you always have to expect everything. He sometimes makes harmonic twists and turns that are, shall I say, hair-raising. At the beginning you sit down to a piece and think: No, he can't do that now! But then you have to come up with a concept and feel your way into the composer. And then, miraculously, it works. But a Reger piece always remains adventurous, even on the harmonium.

Max Reger also had a harmonium, which has been in the Max Reger Institute in Durlach for some time (see Bild und Mitteilungen No. 24 (2013), pp. 3-5).1 You were able to play it yourself. What kind of instrument is it?

It's a beautiful suction wind harmonium that has a very distinguished sound, is very transparent and has great dynamic versatility. It is not an instrument with a lot of stops, but the registers that are installed sound very noble. It is virtually predestined for song arrangements, for example, and also for various other arrangements that Reger wrote of Chopin or Wagner, for example. Not only did I have the pleasure of being able to inaugurate this instrument in concert at the Max Reger Institute, but fortunately I was also awarded the privilege of using the instrument for my complete Reger harmonium recording. That was a great pleasure.

You have already mentioned that old harmoniums usually have to be restored.
How much was Reger's harmonium reworked?

I don't know in this specific instance. But that was probably the case with almost all old harmoniums: The bellows, i.e. the "lungs" of the instrument, are usually so porous that nothing can be done with them. Then the moths or worms are busy eating and gnawing. Finally, the straps of the scoop pedals tear or the felts are completely perforated. Experience shows that such instruments have to be completely dismantled once and then an attempt is made to preserve as much of the substance as possible. This is usually done by organ builders who are specialists in that field. However, there are very few people in Germany who are really good at it. The instrument in the Max Reger Institute is now in sensational condition. You can play everything on it as perfectly as when it was new. My compliments to the organ and harmonium builder!

Do you actually have to tune a harmonium?

As a rule, no. The great thing is that it has resonating metal reeds, which you adjust once and then they don't go out of tune again. That's why the harmonium was so popular a hundred years ago: relatively low purchase costs and you didn't have to call in a piano tuner every year.

How did you actually come into contact with Reger's music? You come from Weiden originally, did that play a role?

In Weiden you can't avoid Reger, of course. And then I'm also born in '73 (laughs).
Oh, so you are exactly one hundred years younger than Reger!
That's right. I started playing Reger on the piano at an early age, and of course as a teenager the big challenge was to get the fingering right so that it was playable. And then the maturing process begins. I started with "Dreams by the Fireside", then continued with "From My Diary", which is also a wonderful playground. When I was older, I started with the Bach Variations, which of course really got down to business.

What are your next projects in terms of recordings?

Well, I've been doing well since 2020 with seven albums. Now I would like to play more concerts and not spend so many days in the recording studio for the time being. But there is already a piano project with melodramas, with the recitalist Susanne Sperrhake. And there will also be a celesta album with several composers who are currently composing works for me.

For example?

The Japanese composer Kazue Isida recently dedicated a gigantic work for celesta to me, over 1300 pages long. It was written in the "quiet time" during the pandemic. He spent a lot of time in nature and was inspired by plants. The work is called "Florum" and Isida musically depicts 360 plants in it. These are mostly two- to eight-page concert pieces, all written tonally, in what he himself calls an "organic style". I don't yet know whether I'll manage all 1300 pages. But I want to try.

The interview was conducted by Moritz Chelius. It is a shortened and adapted version of a podcast that you will soon be able to listen to on the Max Reger Portal. There, Lars David Kellner also plays works by Max Reger for harmonium.